Letter to the editor: Inject sanity, not drugs
Adam Chew has clearly bitten off more than he can chew (Letters, City News, April 29).
But I refuse his nomination for a public paladin unless it’s for a small attempt to improve this sensitive area.
Everyone has a right to live in their chosen environment, with all DAs notified and inviting public comment: it’s a chance to have a say about your neighbourhood. The 180 Victoria Street DA for a drugs facility is alien to its context. After all, Potts Point is the oldest and densest residential area in Australia, established circa 1830, long before its surrounding sleaze arrived. Residents are not moving out as Mr Chew suggests nor are they selfish, but yes, the residents are revolting!
Mr Chew is masticating.
He peddles the urban myth that dispensing free needles “saves lives”. Yawn. Getting off drugs actually saves lives. Mr Chew doesn’t refer to one iota of evidence proving such practices have reduced drug taking, stopped overdosing or completely rehabilitated patients.
Drug users are patients needing a multi-disciplinary approach that eliminates the on-street golden triangle of drug purchase, needle pick-up and inject. Only then will they lead happy, healthy, productive lives.
But this DA is amenity theft and already otiose. There are eight other needle exchanges nearby, with ample vacant spaces right next door to the injecting centre itself and in William Street, with its phalanx of sex workers, for another.
And with injecting centre now attracting over 10,000 registered users, five times its original patient numbers, it’s unsurprising drugs are entrenched in Kings Cross. Any town planner knows increased density means increased intensity.
This risible DA is driven by deceit. The application describes the new outlet as a “Medical Surgery” yet it proposes no doctor or pharmacy on site. It claims to be a Crown DA, meaning it can’t technically be refused by Council and only referred to the minister for alterations, yet is lodged by an admin. officer from Sutherland Hospital 30 kms away, a ruse.
Meanwhile, Sydney Council refuses to publicly publish the Heritage Impact Statement for this site and its intact heritage-listed Edwardian villa, part of a corruptible planning process contrary to the Planning Act. Everyone is told to lodge individual FOI applications instead!
And with both the Liberal and Labor Party candidates for Clover Moore’s seat in the recent state elections now opposing its location, we have invited the Premier and Ministers for Planning, Health and Heritage to inject some sanity into this imbroglio, rather than inject more drugs into peoples’ lives.
Andrew Woodhouse
President Potts Point & King Cross Heritage Society
